Which of the moral rules in the Old Testament are still binding on Christians?

Jonathan M. writes an analysis of the applicability of Old Testament laws that’s a must-read for Christians.

First, the summary:

I recently posted an article on this blog wherein I outlined my viewpoint with regards same sex marriage and some of my reasons for holding to that position. Now, my views on this issue fall into two categories — theological and sociological. While I think that there are good sociological arguments against the institution of same sex marriage (the focus of my previous post), I also hold that homosexual behaviour is immoral for theological reasons. The Biblical basis for this view comes from a number of Scriptural passages. Among them, is Leviticus 18, a chapter concerned exclusively with sexual sin. Verse 22 commands, “Do not have sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman; that is detestable.” Mention of this passage routinely raises the objection, “But aren’t you cherry picking the Bible? After all, you don’t follow all those laws in Leviticus either. Do you refrain from wearing clothing woven from two kinds of material as prohibited in Leviticus 19:19? And do you obey the dietary laws outlined in Leviticus 11?” I get this objection put to me so often that I felt compelled to write a blog post addressing it. I trust that those who make this kind of objection will find this post informative.

Here’s his argument:

In his Summa Theologica, the theologian Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) writes,

“We must therefore distinguish three kinds of precept in the Old Law; viz. ‘moral’ precepts, which are dictated by the natural law; ‘ceremonial’ precepts, which are determinations of the Divine worship; and ‘judicial’ precepts, which are determinations of the justice to be maintained among men.”

[...]Only God’s moral law is applicable to us today. The ceremonial and judicial laws of ancient Israel are not. Galatians 2:1-3; 5:1-11; 6:11-16; 1 Corinthians 7:17-20; Colossians 2:8-12; Phillipians 3:1-3 all indicate that the covenant of circumcision has now been done away with. What counts now is, in a manner of speaking, a circumcision of heart — which takes the form of faith in Christ and repentance from our sin.

I think his argument squares with Jesus’ constant dismissing of ceremonial laws and customs, and his focus instead on moral obligations.

Here’s an example from Matthew 15:10-20:

¹⁰ Jesus called the crowd to him and said, “Listen and understand.

¹¹ What goes into someone’s mouth does not defile them, but what comes out of their mouth, that is what defiles them.”

¹² Then the disciples came to him and asked, “Do you know that the Pharisees were offended when they heard this?”

¹³ He replied, “Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be pulled up by the roots.

¹⁴ Leave them; they are blind guides. If the blind lead the blind, both will fall into a pit.”

¹⁵ Peter said, “Explain the parable to us.”

¹⁶ “Are you still so dull?” Jesus asked them.

¹⁷ “Don’t you see that whatever enters the mouth goes into the stomach and then out of the body?

¹⁸ But the things that come out of a person’s mouth come from the heart, and these defile them.

¹⁹ For out of the heart come evil thoughts—murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander.

²⁰ These are what defile a person; but eating with unwashed hands does not defile them.”

It’s important for Christians to be familiar with these categories, because we get challenged on this all the time by people who reject the idea that God has any say about what is right and wrong for us. The challenge is meant to shut down discussion of objective morality by citing a hard case, and we should be ready to respond.

Filed under: Polemics, Bible, Bible Study, Ceremonial Law, Cherry-Picking, Christ, Christianity, Civil Law, Customs, Gay Agenda, Gay Rights, Homosexuality, Jesus Christ, Judicial Law, Moral Law, Moral Obligations, Morality, Old Testament, Same-Sex Marriage, Sex, Teach, Teaching, Traditions

16 scientists explain why global warming is not a threat

From the Wall Street Journal. (H/T Levin)

Excerpt:

Perhaps the most inconvenient fact is the lack of global warming for well over 10 years now. This is known to the warming establishment, as one can see from the 2009 “Climategate” email of climate scientist Kevin Trenberth: “The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t.” But the warming is only missing if one believes computer models where so-called feedbacks involving water vapor and clouds greatly amplify the small effect of CO2.

The lack of warming for more than a decade—indeed, the smaller-than-predicted warming over the 22 years since the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) began issuing projections—suggests that computer models have greatly exaggerated how much warming additional CO2 can cause. Faced with this embarrassment, those promoting alarm have shifted their drumbeat from warming to weather extremes, to enable anything unusual that happens in our chaotic climate to be ascribed to CO2.

And:

Although the number of publicly dissenting scientists is growing, many young scientists furtively say that while they also have serious doubts about the global-warming message, they are afraid to speak up for fear of not being promoted—or worse. They have good reason to worry. In 2003, Dr. Chris de Freitas, the editor of the journal Climate Research, dared to publish a peer-reviewed article with the politically incorrect (but factually correct) conclusion that the recent warming is not unusual in the context of climate changes over the past thousand years. The international warming establishment quickly mounted a determined campaign to have Dr. de Freitas removed from his editorial job and fired from his university position. Fortunately, Dr. de Freitas was able to keep his university job.

This is not the way science is supposed to work, but we have seen it before—for example, in the frightening period when Trofim Lysenko hijacked biology in the Soviet Union. Soviet biologists who revealed that they believed in genes, which Lysenko maintained were a bourgeois fiction, were fired from their jobs. Many were sent to the gulag and some were condemned to death.

Why is there so much passion about global warming, and why has the issue become so vexing that the American Physical Society, from which Dr. Giaever resigned a few months ago, refused the seemingly reasonable request by many of its members to remove the word “incontrovertible” from its description of a scientific issue? There are several reasons, but a good place to start is the old question “cui bono?” Or the modern update, “Follow the money.”

Alarmism over climate is of great benefit to many, providing government funding for academic research and a reason for government bureaucracies to grow. Alarmism also offers an excuse for governments to raise taxes, taxpayer-funded subsidies for businesses that understand how to work the political system, and a lure for big donations to charitable foundations promising to save the planet. Lysenko and his team lived very well, and they fiercely defended their dogma and the privileges it brought them.

Read the whole thing! This is a must-read.

UPDATE: My friend Neil Simpson has found another recent study showing that there has been no significant global warming for 15 years – and the numbers come from the British Met Office, and the University of East Anglia (home of Climategate).

Related stories

• New study : Earth’s climate is not as sensitive to carbon dioxide as IPCC claims
• Climategate 2.0: Leaked e-mails show scientists intended to deceive public
• NASA admits that their data is worse than CRU Climate-gate data
• 19 points that undermine the claims of global warming alarmists
• UN IPCC global warming alarmism based on student essay and magazine article
• How the UN’s IPCC cites non-scientific claims from the World Wildlife Fund
• Chairman of UN’s IPCC used bogus claims to grab global warming cash
• Britain to be hit by coldest winter in 100 years
• Does global warming increase the frequency of hurricanes?
• Canadian government finds polar bear population up 163% since mid-1980s
• Polar bear populations are not decreasing now
• Russian economists accuse CRU of cherry-picking Russian temperature data
• UK Daily Mail summarizes the Climategate scandal
• Armed guard prevents questions on Climategate at UN conference
• Australian climate data also adjusted to hide the decline
• What does Climategate really prove about global warming?
• Comparison of hockey stick graph data to a larger data set in the same area
• Oceans are not warming now
• Polar ice caps are not melting now

Filed under: News, ACGW, Adjusted Data, AGW, Al Gore, Alarmism, An Inconenient Truth, An Inconvenient Truth, Anthropogenic Global Warming, CAGW, Cap and Trade, Carbon, Carbon Dioxide, Carbon Emission, Carbon Emissions, Cause, Cherry-Picking, Climate Change, Climate Change Skepticism, Climate-gate, Climategate, CO2, Consensus, Corruption, Crisis, Energy Policy, Energy Tax, Environmentalism, Fear, Fraud, Global Cooling, Global Warming, Global Warming Skepticism, Green, Greenhouse, Hide the Decline, Hoax, Hockey Stick Graph, Inconvenient Truth, Indoctrination, Initiative, James Hansen, Keith Briffa, Melting, Michael Mann, Obstruction, Ocean, Official Data, Phil Jones, Polar Bears, Politicization of Science, Population, Propaganda, Raw Data, Regulation, Steve McIntyre, Weather Station

Are Christians inconsistent when deciding which Old Testament moral rules apply?

UPDATE: The link was down, but I chastised Jonathan and he fixed it.

Jonathan M. writes an analysis of the applicability of Old Testament laws that’s a must-read for Christians.

First, the summary:

I recently posted an article on this blog wherein I outlined my viewpoint with regards same sex marriage and some of my reasons for holding to that position. Now, my views on this issue fall into two categories — theological and sociological. While I think that there are good sociological arguments against the institution of same sex marriage (the focus of my previous post), I also hold that homosexual behaviour is immoral for theological reasons. The Biblical basis for this view comes from a number of Scriptural passages. Among them, is Leviticus 18, a chapter concerned exclusively with sexual sin. Verse 22 commands, “Do not have sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman; that is detestable.” Mention of this passage routinely raises the objection, “But aren’t you cherry picking the Bible? After all, you don’t follow all those laws in Leviticus either. Do you refrain from wearing clothing woven from two kinds of material as prohibited in Leviticus 19:19? And do you obey the dietary laws outlined in Leviticus 11?” I get this objection put to me so often that I felt compelled to write a blog post addressing it. I trust that those who make this kind of objection will find this post informative.

Here’s his argument:

In his Summa Theologica, the theologian Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) writes,

“We must therefore distinguish three kinds of precept in the Old Law; viz. ‘moral’ precepts, which are dictated by the natural law; ‘ceremonial’ precepts, which are determinations of the Divine worship; and ‘judicial’ precepts, which are determinations of the justice to be maintained among men.”

[...]Only God’s moral law is applicable to us today. The ceremonial and judicial laws of ancient Israel are not. Galatians 2:1-3; 5:1-11; 6:11-16; 1 Corinthians 7:17-20; Colossians 2:8-12; Phillipians 3:1-3 all indicate that the covenant of circumcision has now been done away with. What counts now is, in a manner of speaking, a circumcision of heart — which takes the form of faith in Christ and repentance from our sin.

I think his argument squares with Jesus’ constant dismissing of ceremonial laws and customs, and his focus instead on moral obligations.

Here’s an example from Matthew 15:10-20:

¹⁰ Jesus called the crowd to him and said, “Listen and understand.

¹¹ What goes into someone’s mouth does not defile them, but what comes out of their mouth, that is what defiles them.”

¹² Then the disciples came to him and asked, “Do you know that the Pharisees were offended when they heard this?”

¹³ He replied, “Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be pulled up by the roots.

¹⁴ Leave them; they are blind guides. If the blind lead the blind, both will fall into a pit.”

¹⁵ Peter said, “Explain the parable to us.”

¹⁶ “Are you still so dull?” Jesus asked them.

¹⁷ “Don’t you see that whatever enters the mouth goes into the stomach and then out of the body?

¹⁸ But the things that come out of a person’s mouth come from the heart, and these defile them.

¹⁹ For out of the heart come evil thoughts—murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander.

²⁰ These are what defile a person; but eating with unwashed hands does not defile them.”

It’s important for Christians to be familiar with these categories.

Filed under: Polemics, Bible, Bible Study, Ceremonial Law, Cherry-Picking, Christ, Christianity, Civil Law, Customs, Gay Agenda, Gay Rights, Homosexuality, Jesus Christ, Judicial Law, Moral Law, Moral Obligations, Morality, Old Testament, Same-Sex Marriage, Sex, Teach, Teaching, Traditions

New study : Earth’s climate is not as sensitive to carbon dioxide as IPCC claims

ECM sent me this article from the Economist concerning some recent research that was published in the prestigious peer-reviewed journal Science.

Excerpt:

Climate science is famously complicated, but one useful number to keep in mind is “climate sensitivity”. This measures the amount of warming that can eventually be expected to follow a doubling in the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, in its most recent summary of the science behind its predictions, published in 2007, estimated that, in present conditions, a doubling of CO2 would cause warming of about 3°C, with uncertainty of about a degree and a half in either direction.

[...]But a paper published in this week’s Science, by Andreas Schmittner of Oregon State University, suggests it is not. In Dr Schmittner’s analysis, the climate is less sensitive to carbon dioxide than was feared.

Existing studies of climate sensitivity mostly rely on data gathered from weather stations, which go back to roughly 1850. Dr Schmittner takes a different approach. His data come from the peak of the most recent ice age, between 19,000 and 23,000 years ago. His group is not the first to use such data (ice cores, fossils, marine sediments and the like) to probe the climate’s sensitivity to carbon dioxide. But their paper is the most thorough. Previous attempts had considered only small regions of the globe. He has compiled enough information to make a credible stab at recreating the climate of the entire planet.

[...]The group’s most likely figure for climate sensitivity is 2.3°C, which is more than half a degree lower than the consensus figure, with a 66% probability that it lies between 1.7° and 2.6°C. More importantly, these results suggest an upper limit for climate sensitivity of around 3.2°C.

I think that it is a good thing for the reputation of scientists that articles like this can be published at all. I have lost a lot of confidence in government-funded science lately, especially when the conclusion of the government-funded research supports the need for more government and high taxes.

In case you missed my recent post on the newly-release Climategate e-mails, then you should read that to see how biased climate scientists can be.

Here are the latest surface temperature measurements.

Filed under: News, ACGW, Adjusted Data, AGW, Al Gore, Alarmism, An Inconenient Truth, An Inconvenient Truth, Anthropogenic Global Warming, CAGW, Cap and Trade, Carbon, Carbon Dioxide, Carbon Emission, Carbon Emissions, Cause, Cherry-Picking, Climate Change, Climate Change Skepticism, Climate-gate, Climategate, CO2, Consensus, Corruption, Crisis, Energy Policy, Energy Tax, Environmentalism, Fear, Fraud, Global Cooling, Global Warming, Global Warming Skepticism, Green, Greenhouse, Hide the Decline, Hoax, Hockey Stick Graph, Inconvenient Truth, Indoctrination, Initiative, James Hansen, Keith Briffa, Melting, Michael Mann, Obstruction, Ocean, Official Data, Phil Jones, Polar Bears, Politicization of Science, Population, Propaganda, Raw Data, Regulation, Steve McIntyre, Weather Station

Climategate 2.0: Leaked e-mails show scientists intended to deceive public

The UK Telegraph’s James Delingpole writes in the Wall Street Journal.

Excerpt:

Last week, 5,000 files of private email correspondence among several of the world’s top climate scientists were anonymously leaked onto the Internet. Like the first “climategate” leak of 2009, the latest release shows top scientists in the field fudging data, conspiring to bully and silence opponents, and displaying far less certainty about the reliability of anthropogenic global warming theory in private than they ever admit in public.

The scientists include men like Michael Mann of Penn State University and Phil Jones of the University of East Anglia, both of whose reports inform what President Obama has called “the gold standard” of international climate science, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

[...][A]t least one scientist involved—Mr. Mann—has confirmed that the emails are genuine, as were the first batch released two years ago.

[...]Consider an email written by Mr. Mann in August 2007. “I have been talking w/ folks in the states about finding an investigative journalist to investigate and expose McIntyre, and his thus far unexplored connections with fossil fuel interests. Perhaps the same needs to be done w/ this Keenan guy.” Doug Keenan is a skeptic and gadfly of the climate-change establishment. Steve McIntyre is the tenacious Canadian ex-mining engineer whose dogged research helped expose flaws in Mr. Mann’s “hockey stick” graph of global temperatures.

One can understand Mr. Mann’s irritation. His hockey stick, which purported to demonstrate the link between man-made carbon emissions and catastrophic global warming, was the central pillar of the IPCC’s 2001 Third Assessment Report, and it brought him near-legendary status in his community. Naturally he wanted to put Mr. McIntyre in his place.

The sensible way to do so is to prove Mr. McIntyre wrong using facts and evidence and improved data. Instead the email reveals Mr. Mann casting about for a way to smear him. If the case for man-made global warming is really as strong as the so-called consensus claims it is, why do the climategate emails show scientists attempting to stamp out dissenting points of view? Why must they manipulate data, such as Mr. Jones’s infamous effort (revealed in the first batch of climategate emails) to “hide the decline,” deliberately concealing an inconvenient divergence, post-1960, between real-world, observed temperature data and scientists’ preferred proxies derived from analyzing tree rings?

What I can’t believe is that we’ve spent billions of dollars funding myths. They lied because they were being paid by the government to lie. The government wanted a crisis that would require more government control over businesses and consumers. And the scientists found that evidence in their “research”, because that’s what the government was paying them to do.

Related stories

• NASA admits that their data is worse than CRU Climate-gate data
• 19 points that undermine the claims of global warming alarmists
• UN IPCC global warming alarmism based on student essay and magazine article
• How the UN’s IPCC cites non-scientific claims from the World Wildlife Fund
• Chairman of UN’s IPCC used bogus claims to grab global warming cash
• Britain to be hit by coldest winter in 100 years
• Does global warming increase the frequency of hurricanes?
• Canadian government finds polar bear population up 163% since mid-1980s
• Polar bear populations are not decreasing now
• Russian economists accuse CRU of cherry-picking Russian temperature data
• UK Daily Mail summarizes the Climategate scandal
• Armed guard prevents questions on Climategate at UN conference
• Australian climate data also adjusted to hide the decline
• What does Climategate really prove about global warming?
• Comparison of hockey stick graph data to a larger data set in the same area
• Oceans are not warming now
• Polar ice caps are not melting now

Filed under: News, ACGW, Adjusted Data, AGW, Al Gore, Alarmism, An Inconenient Truth, An Inconvenient Truth, Anthropogenic Global Warming, CAGW, Cap and Trade, Carbon, Carbon Dioxide, Carbon Emission, Carbon Emissions, Cause, Cherry-Picking, Climate Change, Climate Change Skepticism, Climate-gate, Climategate, CO2, Consensus, Corruption, Crisis, Energy Policy, Energy Tax, Environmentalism, Fear, Fraud, Global Cooling, Global Warming, Global Warming Skepticism, Green, Greenhouse, Hide the Decline, Hoax, Hockey Stick Graph, Inconvenient Truth, Indoctrination, Initiative, James Hansen, Keith Briffa, Melting, Michael Mann, Obstruction, Ocean, Official Data, Phil Jones, Polar Bears, Politicization of Science, Population, Propaganda, Raw Data, Regulation, Steve McIntyre, Weather Station